


Time Flies Like an Arrow.  Fruit Flies Like a Banana.

by micehell



Category: Johnny's Entertainment, TOKIO
Genre: AU (t-shirt (Trickster) god), Humor, M/M, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-31
Updated: 2012-08-31
Packaged: 2017-11-13 07:14:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/500868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/micehell/pseuds/micehell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nagase was running for his life when he ran into the t-shirt kiosk.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Time Flies Like an Arrow.  Fruit Flies Like a Banana.

**Author's Note:**

> This was outlined ages ago, but the only reason it got written at this time was because I hated the ending to another story I was writing and couldn't make up my mind whether it was because it really sucked or because I'm in a bad mood. While I was waiting for a clearer answer on that, I wrote this instead (pretty much all in one go, even though it's like 7000 words long) so it might be a little rushed), but, hey, at least it's done! ;)
> 
> The title's a joke, because it's a t-shirt type of message (and, look, not from Bush for once).

Nagase was running for his life when he ran into the t-shirt kiosk. And by ran into, he meant ran right smack into it, face-planting into the ratty wood crate exterior like he was trying to meld with the damn thing. He’d been pretty sure that it wasn’t there when he was coming up on it, the path having looked fairly empty except for the always teeming crowds that thronged the local market. But then Nagase had been looking back over his shoulder a lot, making sure Sato ‘The Cleaver’ Hiro wasn’t close enough to make sushi out of him as he’d been promising to do for most of the morning.

He'd also apparently missed the proprietor of said kiosk, also surprising since he was just Nagase's type: male, hot, breathing (though he tried not to be too picky about those types of things, really only sticking to breathing as being absolutely necessary). That the guy had been checking him out as well moved the guy up from 'type' to 'target', at least until Nagase's smushed nose started bleeding and he remembered the whole running for his life thing.

Wiping his nose off and reminding his dick that now was hardly the time or place, he started moving again, only to be brought up short when the guy shoved a t-shirt in his face, asking, "Hey, you want to buy this? It's only a dollar. I'm kind of having a going out of business sale and it's my last shirt. I'll even throw in a matching cap for free."

The price and the free gift with purchase would have normally been a lure for Nagase, a frequent victim of the bargain price sales pitch, but there was the whole running for his life thing. Not that it would have been much more of a tempting offer without that, since, even to Nagase's fashion-victim eyes, the t-shirt was dead ugly. The background color was something between 'color you throw up after you've had one too many burritos' and 'color that comes out after drinking too much grape juice', the print on it was in a totally uncomplementary baby blue, and the message it spelled out was _World Peace Survivor: Today Through…_ , which didn't make a hell of a lot of sense. 

Since he was wearing a t-shirt with a screaming hand on it, which really didn't make a hell of a lot of sense, either, Nagase would have let that last part slide, but the colors were just... _monumentally_ bad. Even if the guy had been giving it away it would have cost too much. Before he could say any of that, though, it occurred to him that The Cleaver, who'd seen him up close and personal after several close calls that morning, would be expecting to find him wearing his much more nicely colored (though still with the screaming hand) t-shirt and no hat, and that if he was wearing the ugly t-shirt and the ugly matching cap instead… well, that might be worth far more than a dollar.

He fished out a bill and all but threw it at the hot guy, pulling the t-shirt on right over his old one and slamming the cap on his head, already on the move even as he was trying to straighten the whole mess out. He was going so fast he barely heard the _Thanks for your business as always_ , and he certainly didn't hear the _I'll be seeing you later_ that followed it.

~*~

The first time it happened Nagase thought it might just be his imagination. 

He'd finally escaped from the market without seeing any huge guys wielding large kitchen cutlery, and he decided he could take a breather. He'd been on the go since the phone call that morning (Taichi's voice blaring out of the cell phone that he should run, like right now, and, no, he couldn't even take a moment to pee), and Nagase was exhausted and hungry. He'd stopped in at a little hole in the wall diner, just wanting a sandwich and a coke to take the edge off. While he was waiting for his order, he thought back over just how much his day (and life) sucked.

They'd known it was going to be bad news last week when their tiny little gang got a visit from The Cleaver's much larger (and infinitely more dangerous) one. He, Leader, and Taichi had always been on the outskirts of the real gangs, just doing small time cons and minor retrieval work (mostly because not even Taichi, for all his wannabe bad boy image, seriously wanted to do anything more, but at least a tiny bit of it was because Leader was always such a big sucker that half the time they wound up helping the people they were trying to steal from in the first place), and while they'd never gotten enough money to count as rich (or even really much beyond poor if any of them felt like being honest about it), they'd been happy enough with the way things were. 

That first visit had been full of false bonhomie and phrases like 'cooperation' and 'mutually beneficial', but none of them had bought it. It hadn't taken a genius (even Nagase had clued in right away) to figure out that 'mutually beneficial' meant 'until we decide whether we can make you fit in our organization or not', and the appearance of The Cleaver on his doorstep as he was trying to leave that morning led Nagase to believe that the answer had came down pretty heavily on the 'not' side. 

His meal came, but Nagase's normally emotion-proof appetite was having a hard time wanting the awesome looking bacon sandwich when his stomach was still clenching in anxiety. It didn't help that he'd lost his cell phone early on, so he wasn't sure how the others were doing. But, he reminded himself, it was silly to go hungry when he didn't know when he'd next get to eat, and, well, it was bacon after all, and he wouldn't want it to think he wasn't constant in his affections, so he picked up the sandwich to take a big bite when…

Bam! someone knocked it out of his hand. It sailed across the counter, small bits of lettuce and mayo escaping as it went, before landing with a big splash in the deep fryer, sending hot oil flying everywhere, including over the cook. Afraid that the cook might also have a nickname like The Cleaver (or maybe The Fryer or The Julienner), Nagase just offered his apologies, gulped down his drink, and ducked out of the restaurant before he could find out for sure.

It was only once he was (relatively) safe back on the street that Nagase wondered if the person who'd knocked the sandwich out of his hand really had been the t-shirt guy or if it had just been so long since he'd last got laid (two days and counting) that the guy had still been on his mind. Whichever, Nagase had bigger things to worry about (much though his dick might argue the point), like thinking of some place he could hole up in until he and the other guys could figure out what they were going to do.

~*~

The second time there was no doubting it was the t-shirt guy. Nagase had been right in the middle of getting his ass handed to him by a bunch of The Cleaver's goons (thankfully cutlery free, at least) when T-shirt Guy showed up and started plowing into them. Where Nagase had been outclassed (as tall as he was, he still sucked at fighting, even Taichi able to drop him most of the time), T-shirt Guy wasn't having any problems at all, dropping bad guys like bowling pins. 

Nagase hadn't been in all that great of shape to appreciate it; his nose bleeding (again), his lip split and stinging like a mofo, and enough bruises over the rest of him that the t-shirt was going to eventually blend in with his skin tone. But he was still conscious enough that when T-shirt Guy grabbed his arm and shouted at him to run, Nagase could _just_ do that. He certainly wasn't the steadiest of the two of them, but he managed to follow the other man's convoluted path down a bunch of streets and alleys until they fetched up in an abandoned machine shop, most everything gone but for some racks and tiers that made a good place to collapse behind, which Nagase did, pushed way past his limit.

He was still trying to catch his breath when T-shirt Guy said, "I guess introductions are in order after all that. I'm Yamaguichi Tatsuya, but my friends… well, you can call me Gussan."

Since the only reply Nagase was capable of at the time was panting and _Ow!_ , Gussan took that as permission to go on. "I guess you're probably wondering why I'm following you around like a stalker and all, but don't worry, it's not sexual or anything."

As that was more disappointing than comforting, Nagase frowned, but he was still winded enough that he just waved for the guy to continue.

"Well, um, this is going to sound crazy, but the reason I keep showing up when your life is in danger is that I, well, kind of have to. Because of the t-shirt, see."

Nagase didn't see, but then he was confused about more than the t-shirt. "Keep showing up… like in more than once? So it really was you back at the diner?" Gussan nodded, but that didn't really relieve Nagase's confusion as, okay, bacon was bad for his arteries and all that, but he didn't really think that one sandwich (out of the vast amount he'd had in his admittedly not very long life) was going to be an immediate threat to said life.

Either Gussan could read Nagase's face really well (not hard, since pretty much everything he thought flashed across it), or Nagase had said some of that out loud (and, yeah, the filter between his thoughts and his mouth wasn't as good as it could be either), because he smiled and said, "It wasn't the nitrates in the bacon or the grease or anything, it was the fact that the diner was having a hard time making ends meet and they'd pushed it a little too far on the 'is this too green to eat anymore' front."

"Okay… and you knew that how?"

"Well, um, this is going to sound probably a little crazier, but I'm the avatar for a god. A trickster god at that. Only, he's not so much like the ones you hear about in stories, where they're all about the riddles and the games that eventually lead to world-changing deeds and stuff. This one is more about getting into arguments with humans and then making them do weird stuff for him until he figures he's had enough fun. I pissed him off back about thirty years ago and I've been selling t-shirts for him ever since."

Nagase tried to think of something way cool and smart to say to that, but all he could think of was, "Okaaaay." It seemed appropriate though, and Gussan just smiled at him, so Nagase guessed that he hadn't lost too many points in the 'potential fuck' category (saying Gussan wasn't _too_ crazy and saying they were both still alive when they finally got a good moment for it).

"Yeah, I know, crazy, but there you go, still true. But the weirdest part of it wasn't just that he had me selling t-shirts, but that they were all ugly and had stupid expressions on them, so that only weird people bought them."

"Hey!" Nagase resented that (though, okay, it was probably true, even beyond his having only bought the shirt for fairly valid reasons).

But Gussan just blithely continued on, ignoring the interruption. "The trick was that once I sold a t-shirt to someone, I was compelled to make sure that what was printed on the t-shirt stayed true for as long as the buyer had the shirt. Mostly it was small things, and didn't take much effort, but the little girl whose mother brought her one that said _My Daddy Can Beat Your Daddy Up_ was a real trial, since her father was both an asshole and a lousy fighter. Thankfully she eventually spilled chocolate all over it and her mother cut it up for rags, so now her daddy is getting his just desserts without me having to worry about it anymore. Of course, now there's you, and… well, now there's you."

Nagase was the one doing the ignoring this time, just passing right over the implied insult to focus on what this meant for him. Because, yeah, it was possible the guy might be a little crazy (though he _seemed_ sane enough, and Nagase was friends with Taichi and Leader both, so it wasn't like he wasn't used to a certain level of crazy), but whatever the reason why the guy was helping him out, it still meant _someone_ was helping him out, and he could really use it. "So because the t-shirt says I'm a survivor, you have to protect me? No matter what, right?"

Gussan seemed a little amused that Nagase wasn't asking anything but that, but he nodded and then went and got some water so Nagase could clean up. "If I'm going to have to protect you no matter what, I might as well stick close. Apparently you can't be left alone long without a keeper."

Long inured to insults as well as craziness, Nagase just smiled. His day was so looking up.

~*~

After the second time The Cleaver's men found them (and the third time he got punched around), Nagase decided his day sucked. Even Gussan was looking a little worse for wear and neither of them had much breath for talking anymore.

They'd holed up in a love hotel this time, Gussan figuring that 1) no one would ask any questions about how they looked or what they were doing, and 2) maybe the proximity of other people would slow the assholes down.

Nagase, being Nagase, just hoped that 1) they'd get enough time to make use of the rotating bed.

He was pretty sure that Gussan would go for it, attraction-wise at least. He wasn't as obvious as Nagase, but he had eyes and Nagase had turned around several times to find Gussan using them on his ass, so he figured that was certainly a vote in the yes column. But so much else about the guy was still a mystery to him that he wasn't completely sure about anything. 

For one, the guy was older than he looked, obviously, since he said he'd been selling t-shirts for thirty years, but he looked no older than thirty at most. So unless he'd pissed the trickster guy off in his cradle, Nagase figured he was definitely older, but… even beyond his looks, he didn't seem like it. Even his speech was normal sounding, not that slightly bit out of date as Leader's was, and Leader was only just a little past thirty himself. 

Two, he obviously had either used a love hotel before or else he was a quick study, because he'd gotten the room without fumbling in the least over the computer selection (using his company credit card at that, and how did billing work with a god, even?) and he hadn't batted an eye at some of the toys that were displayed around the room, but he still seemed foreign in the room somehow. As if he were standing in a museum of a love hotel rather than a room that was used for sex on a regular basis. Even if he were truly indifferent to Nagase, Nagase didn't see how the guy kept from being self-conscious just standing so close to a huge, garishly purple dildo.

Three, Gussan talked to Nagase a fair amount. When they weren't outright running or being punched, he told Nagase about some of the more interesting shirts he'd sold, about this yakiniku place that had the best meat for some really good prices, and about why short boards were far superior to long. When he wasn't talking he was listening; about why Nagase was on the run, about the other guys in his gang, and about what his name was (since he'd forgotten to introduce himself back at the start, what with the out of breath thing and the weird ass t-shirt god story and all). But in all of that, what Gussan had never done was gotten into any real personal detail; nothing about how he'd met the god, nothing about his family (or lack thereof), nothing about Gussan, really.

And for all that the initial attraction had been all _Ooh, hot!_ , Nagase was starting to think that that reticence was a bit of a shame. Gussan just seemed, well, likeable even beyond the hotness, and Nagase had to admit that it was a total bonus when he actually liked the guys he wanted to fuck. Heck, even though Leader irritated him on a regular basis and even though Taichi liked to call him slut a little too often, Nagase had never turned either one of them down when they got a little lonely (or a little drunk), and that wasn't _just_ because Taichi was mostly right about the slut thing.

Figuring that it was a shame to waste the room (not to mention that all the near death experiences weren't exactly curbing his libido any), Nagase decided he might as well try it on. The worst that could happen was Gussan would say no, and there was a good chance he wouldn't, especially not since Nagase would so be offering to catch. Not that he wasn't fond of sticking his dick into various holes and all, because that was totally awesome, but then he also had holes he liked other people to stick their dicks in, and the whole 'protecting' him thing that Gussan was working was doing all kinds of things to kinks Nagase hadn't even known he had (and to some of the ones he'd been quite familiar with, too).

He could have tried to set the mood with some music, or he could have done something with the lighting, or he could have led up to it in some kind of subtle way, but Nagase, being Nagase, figured being Nagase was the best method he had, so he just asked, "Hey, you want to fuck me?"

~*~

Gussan was running for his life when he first ran into the Trickster, and by ran into, he meant ran smack into him, face planting into all the nearly six feet, elegantly (if oddly) dressed bit of him (or, more accurately, mostly his chest, since that's where Gussan's nowhere near six feet height reached). And even though he'd had a good reason to be running (the whole for his life thing), and though he'd apologized when he realized Sato 'The Dicer' Ken's guys were nowhere around for the moment, it turned out that wasn't enough.

He'd been kind of used to life screwing him over by that point, though. He'd left home at 17 for far too good reasons, struggled just to find work to get by, and by 18 had finally gotten desperate enough to join a gang. Which had all been well and good until things had gone beyond a little bit of grift and a little bit of muscle, and he'd found out that some gangs were easier to get into than get out of. The Trickster… solved that problem, if not in the best of ways.

Though, honestly, at first it hadn't been too bad. He'd been given a nice place to stay, a credit card to live off of (though his bills were gone over with a fine tooth comb, and he'd been so ecstatic when the internet had made getting porn much easier, just to stop having to hear the Trickster bitch about the expense of it), and all he'd had to do for all of that was sell some weird t-shirts and make sure the messages on them were true. Not that bad a price.

Until he'd found out that anyone he got involved with would invariably start to wonder where his money came from, and, really, what could he answer that didn't sound crazy? Until he'd found out how hard it was to explain why he'd suddenly need to take off from time to time (one (especially bad) time being right in the middle of sex), and figured out that saying, "I was compelled by the god I work for to go beat up some kid's daddy because of a t-shirt," would probably not win him any points. And while he'd aged normally until right around 30, after that the Trickster had said, "Since there's no telling when I might decide to forgive you -- could be tomorrow, could be next century -- I'll have to stop you from aging, since it's not like I want to steal _all_ of your life, thoroughly justified pique or not." But how do you explain to your boyfriend that you just didn't age? Good genes just wasn't going to cut it.

So he'd decided against having any real relationships, choosing to let his face and his body get him enough action to keep him physically satisfied, and to let the emotional needs slide for a while. Which was okay at first, too, but… well, sex was good, but loneliness was loneliness, and the not being able to really make friends thing was a pain in the ass. He put up with it for years, hoping that every one that that one would be the last and the Trickster would finally let him go, and yet… well, that eventually seemed about as likely as someone believing the good genes thing.

As it was, Gussan should have been more suspicious when the Trickster had shown up a couple of years ago with a 'going out of business' sign and a really ugly t-shirt, but he'd been too excited by what it meant at the time. Years too many of being bored with his life and yet having little control over changing it had made even jacking off seem like an effort, and Gussan had been just about ready to quit the whole business, even knowing it might mean the same thing as trying to quit his last one had. The Trickster telling him, "It'll all be over as soon as you finish with just one last shirt," had been a carrot on a stick, however, and he'd gone after it with all he had.

But the shirt had been _monumentally_ ugly and no one was buying. It had left Gussan with a lot of free time to think, both about what the Trickster might have really meant by the whole thing being 'over' (he'd said he didn't want to take all of Gussan's life, yes, but then, the whole Trickster thing (plus past experience dealing with him) didn't make Gussan as sanguine about that as he'd like to be) and about what the message on the t-shirt actually said. It hadn't been promising on either front.

He'd taken to watching the news, finally figuring out that no one would be able to buy the shirt until there was actually a moment of true world peace. Okay, not the lasting kind, what with that being a pipe dream and all and even the Trickster wouldn't play a joke that had _no_ chance of ever happening, but at least a temporary lull in whatever fighting there was going on the world over. Since it wasn't like the news actually reported on that type of thing ("There was absolutely no moment of world peace this day"), though, he'd eventually resorted to his old friend the internet to see how likely such an event was to happen. Months upon freaking months of research finally led him to the best answer he was likely to get: unlikely as all fuck.

Oh, it seemed like it did happen from time to time, but it was rare, sometimes decades going by without a single incidence. And from what Gussan could piece together, even when it did happen, it usually only lasted a short while. But then that was more the buyer's problem than Gussan's, so he didn't worry about it overmuch, just crossing his fingers and (ignoring any lingering anxieties about that dubious 'over' thing) hoping for soon.

At least he hadn't worried about how long that world peace thing would last until one improbable day, when this really hot guy plowed into his cart and actually bought the shirt. Then, well, it started to seem less _just_ the buyer's problem, what with how Nagase was both hot and funny and how he did weird things to Gussan's protective instinct (which, seriously, hadn't stirred in more years than the brat had even lived, and that seemed to have kicked into overdrive as well). Then that new worry had combined with the ongoing anxiety about the (still dubious) 'over' until… if the Trickster hadn't given him the magic health free pass all those years ago, Gussan would certainly have had an ulcer by then.

Even with all that worry, though, and the constant running and fighting he'd had to do too much of, Gussan couldn't help but wonder if one of the reasons he'd chosen a love hotel to hole up in was, well, because it was a love hotel. Neither the worry nor the running and fighting had done a thing to make Nagase any less hot and funny, and it certainly hadn't helped with the protective instinct (which, if he were being honest, was mostly manifesting at the moment as wanting to push Nagase down on the stupid rotating bed and fucking him hard right into it, with maybe a little bit of kissing thrown in there because the guy just looked like he needed it). So even though he'd been trying to be professional about everything, playing as if he had no idea what the room was usually used for let alone the huge, garishly purple dildo, he really didn't blame himself at all when, after Nagase asked him (in a totally Nagase way), "Hey, you want to fuck me?" he pushed the kid down on the bed and fucked him hard right into it.

~*~

The second time they fucked it was slower than the first time, which was good, since neither of them had anything to brag about in how long they'd lasted. Nagase had been ready to go, dick tapping on his stomach, in what seemed like seconds after he'd come, but Gussan, even with the magic health thing, was still (physically at any rate) around thirty, and he needed a little bit longer to go again.

After watching Nagase touch himself, long fingers wrapped around all that thick length, face gone slack with need, just like it had when he'd come, and Gussan found out that a little bit longer wasn't as long as all that, dragging Nagase's long legs up over his shoulder as he pushed in; long, slow, steady. Well, long, slow, and steady until all that tight heat was around him again and Nagase was impatiently grinding up into him and, damn it, Gussan wanted him then, there, hard, fast, anything to show him who he belonged to. He was so caught up in the feel of the body under him, the feel of his dick being pulled in deeper, that he never even registered that the protective instinct had turned possessive, and after that the only thing he could register was the feeling of being hit by the best orgasm he could remember, so intense he thought it was like getting smacked by pleasure (post-coital glow not making his thought process in any way profound).

The third time took much longer to happen (all the way from the bed to the shower, where Gussan showed Nagase just how convenient his height was when he was on his knees), and the fourth time took even longer than that (since they both fell asleep after eating a large pizza each, which took far more time away from sex than either of them wanted, but, then, it was _pizza_ after all). After the fifth time, though, Gussan had finally had enough (and was definitely sore enough that another go around didn't sound _quite_ as nice as it had) so that he had time to think. And, either fortunately or unfortunately depending on how you looked at it, Nagase had time to talk.

The guy was tall and he was great in bed, so it was easy to think of Nagase as being older than he really was. But even with that, Gussan figured he was probably still in his early to mid twenties, still young enough to be awkward when talking about serious things, and never had that been more apparent than when he started trying to do a relationship talk with a guy he'd only known for hours and who he probably still wasn't completely sure was sane. But none of that seemed to slow Nagase down any, apparently ready to go after what he wanted regardless of how weird it might be. 

"You know, since you're stuck with me because of the t-shirt and all, maybe… well, maybe you should just stick around even after things get better. I mean eventually me and the other guys will figure out what to do to be safe, saying nothing too drastic happens in the meantime, and then things will settle down. 'Cause, you know, normally I don't get chased around by guys called The Cleaver or eat bad bacon sandwiches or anything like that, so your work load should be drastically reduced once we get that worked out. The Cleaver thing, that is, not the sandwich, 'cause that has to be a one off or I'd have been dead long ago. But, whatever, what I mean is that we'll probably have to relocate and then we'll be looking around for work, and maybe you could, you know, look with us."

Gussan was floored by the offer, even though he could feel (right down to still thrumming bones) the same connection that had probably made Nagase offer in the first place, and he really didn't even know where to start to answer.

Nagase took the silence as rejection, and tried to laugh it off, rolling over and saying, "Well, you know, just keep it in mind should your god ever let you get another job."

And even if he hadn't been kind of almost half in love with the brat, as short a time as he'd known him notwithstanding, Gussan could never have resisted trying to take the sting of the unintentional rejection away. He still didn't know what he was going to say to explain everything, but he had finally figured out where to start, pulling Nagase back over and giving him the kiss he'd meant to give him back when everything first started.

And if that led to their sixth time, and to both of them walking funny afterward, well, there was a price to pay for everything.

~*~

Nagase's ass hurt and his jaw was kind of tired (not to mention which there were still people trying to kill him and his friends), but he really was just about the happiest he'd been in… well, since he couldn't remember. Even his dick was mostly quiet for once, content with what it had gotten (though it still twitched from time to time, far more optimistic about its prowess than it really had any reason to be). It was only his brain that wasn't quite as happy, still trying to process what Gussan had told him. "So the Trickster might possibly be trying to do you in with the whole t-shirt thing? 'Over' as in dead over? And my protection is likely to be up at any moment?"

Gussan nodded, looking a little guilty, but then the guy had taken the protective thing to heart (which was still doing things for Nagase that he'd be embarrassed about if he actually had any embarrassment over that kind of thing). 

There were so many ways that Nagase could answer that. 1) It sucks that your Trickster is such a bastard. 2) It sucks that we both might be dead soon, 'cause I really like you and you're fucking amazing in bed, and I really think you'd like my friends and that they'd like you, and I've never had a real relationship before, but I think this one might work all the same. 3) We should get dressed then, since who knows what will happen soon, and I'd feel better if I wasn't swinging in the wind when it did.

He went with option 3, but he figured by the way that Gussan smiled at him (and the way that he was still ogling Nagase from time to time) that he'd guessed both 1 and 2 anyway.

~*~

Apparently the whole world peace thing ended about an hour after that. They'd had time to shower and dress and talk about a few unimportant things (their favorite band, what dishwashing detergent they used, boxers vs briefs), and then all hell broke loose.

Even Gussan pretty much had his ass handed to him at that point, but Nagase managed to use a distraction (a mostly naked (and incredibly ugly) old guy and a barely dressed (and really hot) chick coming to find out what all the noise was about, and Nagase hadn't been sure which had caught goon's attentions more, the babe or the 'oh my god, cover that up' old guy dick) to buy them some time to get out of there. They wound up in yet another abandoned factory, this one with no convenient places to hide, and it was only a rickety door that was between them and the cutlery guys when Gussan laughed and said, "I really should have guessed right away that that t-shirt being the last one didn't bode well. I guess… well, I guess it still went better than I'd thought it would." 

He kissed Nagase then, and if they hadn't been in fear for their lives and all that, their seventh time would have happened right then and there. Even with his newly re-split lip hurting (along with all the cuts and bruises he'd gotten over the day, plus the pain in his ass that he'd remember fondly for as long as he got to live), Nagase made the kiss deeper and stronger, wanting to take it with him if he could. From the sounds the door was making, he was only moments from finding out if he really could, when all of a sudden he had an amazing thought, the answer so obvious to him that Gussan later claimed he could see the light bulb actually shining over Nagase's head.

~*~

There was a small argument _after_ the kiss and light bulb and _before_ the whole having their asses saved, in that Nagase was a lousy speller but kept insisting he was right even when Gussan kept pointing out that he wasn't. Since it was rather important that they spell the word correctly, and since Gussan was a little freaked out about the medium they were spelling _with_ , the argument might have got a little heated. But just as the door finally collapsed, a rival gang of mobsters showed up and started beating the hell out of The Cleaver's guys, pretty much taking care of that problem once and for all (since from the news report they saw later there apparently wasn't much left of The Cleavers after the other gang was done). Nagase and Gussan took the chance to escape, both of them holding the other one up and smiling as they limped away (the beatings and the sex making running a little awkward). The new addendum on Nagase's t-shirt was drying a little and it was a tiny bit smeared as well (it being hard to write well using only your finger and some blood), but right after the tacky baby blue lettering spelling out _World Peace Survivor: Today Through…_ was tacky blood red (and accurately spelled) lettering spelling out _Forever_.

It shouldn't have worked, there being no way world peace would be forever. It shouldn't have worked since Gussan, the avatar, hadn't really been able to pull the survival thing off for even a day, forget forever. It shouldn't have worked because the Trickster was an asshole, and he'd have never be _that_ nice… but it did work. Even without the world peace, even with Gussan barely being able to walk, forget protect anything, it kept working; all the way down the street, all the way out of town, all the way to them meeting up with Nagase's friends (both still alive and in better shape than they were), and all the way to Gussan taking Nagase up on his offer, almost unable to believe it was real, but willing to take what he could get.

And if he thought he heard the Trickster's laughter as they limped away, well, Gussan decided to believe that that was his imagination. 

~*~

He believed it right up until two months later. He was at the house he and Nagase shared, waxing his board and enjoying the sounds and smell of the ocean that made up their back yard. It was his favorite thing about the place (besides the bedroom (or the kitchen table, the living rug, the shower, the wall in the hallway… well, and pretty much every other place he and Nagase had managed to christen so far)), having the ocean so close and his boards in easy reach, like a bit of sandy heaven after years of a comfortable and boring hell.

He hadn't even tried to use his credit card after they'd escaped, not wanting to piss off the Trickster if he really had let them go, but after thirty years of not touching his bank account, the moderate amount of money he'd saved up being a low-level flunky had grown into more than enough for them to get by on. It had gotten them the house, Leader and Taichi the down payment on a nice apartment (though Taichi was still claiming they were just living together for frugality's sake), a store in a combini franchise for all of them to operate (none of them feeling like being even close to 'bad' guys any more), and a nest egg that would keep Nagase and Gussan comfortable even with how much the two of them could eat.

It had even gotten them the airtight, bulletproof frame that hung on the wall. The Trickster knocking on it, apparently testing how fragile it was, was what alerted Gussan that his reprieve was over. The Trickster had given up knocking on the frame by the time Gussan found him, but he was still studying the t-shirt inside of it, a sly smile on his lips as he read its edited message. "It really was kind of clever of him to think of it. Not that using words like clever about your new boytoy isn't kind of funny."

Gussan didn't bother to defend his 'boytoy', since a) much as he liked the guy, it was a little true, and b) that wasn't what the Trickster was here for. Instead he said, "The scientist who arranged the frame for us estimated that it would survive almost anything short of some militon of TNT, or something like that, a big blast anyway, and that it will be several hundred years before the blood fades enough for the _Forever_ to be unrecognizable, which, as my 'boytoy' said, means we'll have been long dead before it matters anyway." Gussan said it as casually as he could, but he knew, even as he said it, that the Trickster could always cut through their protection, either literally or figuratively, if he wanted to.

But the god just smiled his not quite as sly smile (the one that actually seemed kind of nice if you didn't know what he was) and said, "All things considered, I guess we can say that you sold your last shirt. But with the way things turned out, instead of being free of my service, you're going to be stuck fulfilling the terms of the shirt until the idiot dies of old age, or you do. Though that doesn't seem to bother you too much, does it?"

Gussan felt his heart give a little bump, wondering if that meant they really were going to make it after all, but the Trickster, being a trickster, wasn't done yet. "I could… arrange for you to be free of both the t-shirt and any other, hmm, negative consequences. You could live a long and happy life without any obligations. I could even make you seem like your real age if you'd like, so that you could see your family again. Some lie here or there about having amnesia all these years instead of just not having anything to do with them. Well, okay, it would have been hard to have anything to do with them after you, ahem, started to work for me, but there was that two years you ignored them before you met me. Such a horrible son you were. But that can be all in the past."

It was tempting in a way. Gussan really had been a bad son, at least to some degree, to his mother. He should have… he didn't know, done _something_ to get her out of the house with him. Or at least tried harder. But he knew it was just a dream. He'd watched over them when he'd had the chance to through the years. She'd never accepted the help anyone had tried to give them when he'd been a child, and she certainly hadn't changed her mind since, still with the jerk he'd used to call father even after all the years he'd treated her like dirt.

Gussan certainly wasn't going to throw Nagase to the side for someone who'd chosen to live that life herself. He shook his head, saying, "Nah, I think I'll keep the idiot I have."

The Trickster smiled again, the one he used when he wasn't really pissed or trying to annoy someone. It was times like that, when he seemed almost human, friendly even, that Gussan wondered if all those years… well, if maybe some of the good things that had happened to him hadn't been just chance. If maybe the reason why the trick with the t-shirt had worked was because the Trickster didn't really mind that it had. But before he could take that thought too far, the Trickster shrugged his normal annoying shrug and said, "Okay, then. The job's yours until whenever. Just remember that there're no holidays, sick leave, or resigning allowed. So every time your big gorilla gets into trouble…"

Gussan felt it then, the tug that told him he was needed. That somehow, in the short distance between the supermarket and home, Nagase had managed to get into a life or death situation.

An hour later, back at home with the evil Chihuahua threat taken care of, Gussan looked around their house, empty of anything but what they wanted there, and smiled (the sly one he used when he was about to fuck Nagase over the back of the couch (yet another one of his favorite places)). Saving Nagase always made him horny as hell, and since Nagase was pretty much perpetually in that state, it looked like both of them were about to get lucky. After all, it was his job to protect the overgrown idiot, even if it was just from blue balls, and Gussan believed in doing the job right. 

/story

**Author's Note:**

> Mabo's actually in the story jic you hadn't guessed ahead, 'cause, yeah, I mean for him to be the Trickster. It's just that Gussan doesn't quite get the niceness hiding behind some of the things he does (or maybe he does get it... or maybe it's not really there ;).


End file.
